CHOICE Voice

Come and Protest against Motor Finance Wizard: Saturday June 28, 2008 at St Mary’s Dealership.

The Consumer Credit Legal Centre (NSW) is working with Consumer Action Law Centre in Melbourne, and other agencies throughout the country to organise a National Day of Action.

Most financial counsellors and consumer lawyers are aware of the practices of Motor Finance Wizard, a company that inflates the price of the vehicles it sells and then claims to give ‘interest-free’ loans. This practice not only misleads customers but allows the company to claim that they don’t have to comply with the Consumer Credit Code. The company also targets social security recipients and other low income earners, assesses ability to repay inadequately, and the cars are often in very condition.

People will be on hand to give out consumer information and material promoting their free, independent services and lawyers can join in giving free legal advice on credit, debt and related consumer issues.

And check out the photos of Consumer Action’s previous days out at Motor Finance Wizard in Melbourne (such as the one above).

Selling junk foods to kids is big business - and a big headache for parents. In February, the South Australian Government called for a voluntary nationwide withdrawal of junk food ads during children’s television viewing, following a similar ban in the UK being phased in now.

March 15 is World Consumer Rights Day, and this year’s theme is “Junk Food Generation”. We’re inviting you to join the global consumer action to support healthier kids and happier parents.

You can help build momentum and influence decision-makers right now, by putting a human face to this issue. We want them to hear your story. If you’re into video, tell your story on YouTube as a video response or email ci@choice.com.au with the link (or let us know in the comments field below). We’ll add it to our playlist!

If video’s not really your thing, head over to CHOICE and tell us your story via our feedback form.

Whew. If you want to attract spam, just write about money and pharmaceuticals! CHOICE Voice has been receiving hundreds of spam comments, mostly about buying cheap prescription drugs or loan offers (although the ubiquitous explicit content sites are right up there also). You’re not seeing them on the site because we have a filter behind the scenes, but to help combat this increasing issue, we have installed a CAPTCHA system from reCAPTCHA.

Now, when you wish to submit a comment, you will also fill out a sequence of letters. It’s a simple task for humans that can’t easily be replicated by a computer so it helps prevent automated ‘bots’ from clogging up the blogosphere.

For more information on CAPTCHAs, check out the article on CHOICE Online.

The spotlight is again on bad products, with CHOICE holding its 2007 Shonky Awards in Sydney.

So what topped this year’s list? One of Australia’s leading banks, a popular spread aimed at children and a major appliance manufacturer. CHOICE gave out nine awards in all:

• Teleconfusion: Mobile phone industry
• Spoiling the fun: Play For Fun Flying Ring
• Nasty shonkeyness: Woofaz retractable dog leash PA0087B
• Warm wine and high energy: Dome 900192 and Rank Arena RAWC28
• Unfair fees: Westpac
• Low General Integrity (GI): Ferrero Nutella
• Greenwash: LG combined steam washer/dryer WD-1248RD
• Supershonkyness: Superjuices
• Ain’t Shrek Beautiful: Advertising Standards Bureau (ASB)

The Shonkys are supposed to be a bit of fun, but they also give an insight into some of the misleading claims, product safety issues, self-serving behaviour and the environmentally bankrupt spin out there in Australia.

Head on over to CHOICE to vote for your favourite Shonky, or nominate one of your own. Or watch the YouTube video.

Audio files of all Congress sessions are now online at the CHOICE Congress Full Coverage page.

The audio recordings are in MP3 format, suitable for most music and media players.

A Fuji Xerox executive has suggested that mandatory sustainability reporting may be necessary for transparent and speedy change towards real sustainable consumption.

Ramsey Moodie, Corporate Affairs Manager at Fuji Xerox, was a speaker at the congress session on sustainable consumption and tackling climate change.

During the course of his presentation Mr Moodie said “we’re all consumers, we’re all concerned. Once we realise our power we can change the world” (view Mr Moodie’s presentation). Read more »

More than 300 photos from the CI Congress are now available on Flickr. You can view the photos at www.flickr.com/groups/cicongress2007 and, if you have a Flickr account, you can download the photos, become a member of the CI World Congress 2007 group and invite others to join. You can also post your own photos to the group.

www.flickr.com More photos in CI World Congress 2007

The photos are licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 Australia License.

CHOICE Sustainable Consumption Project Officer Kate Norris reports on one of the interesting fringe meetings held prior to the Congress:

Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals are chemicals that can mimic or block the human endocrine functions of metabolism, growth and development, and tissue function.

According to research presented by Dr Michael Hansen from Consumers Union (USA), EDCs have been linked to a range of health problems including leukemia, other cancers and attention deficit disorder. [View presentation] Read more »

One of the interesting presentations at the Congress was Guido Adriaenssens’ talk on how International testing of products can contribute to sustainable consumption.

Recent trends in product testing have seen the inclusion of environmental test criteria such as recycling, use of problematic materials, stand by energy and total energy consumption and life cycle analysis. Social responsibility criteria have included social criteria and transparency.

Testing and publication of test results has had a positive impact on products. These include:

• Dramatic reduction of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAH) in DIY products and tyres in 1 year
• Reduction of standby energy from 100 to less than 1 Watt in most products
• Reduction of water and energy consumption of large household appliances by more than 50%
• Accepting CSR criteria by manufacturers increased from 40% to 80% in 3 years

This is one of more than 40 Congress presentations now on the CI Congress area of slideshare.net.

Consumers International is encouraging all members to complete the member feedback survey.